A sportswriter's life: Jason Alexander and Wendy Makkena are husband and wife on CBS' Listen Up.

By Robert Voets, CBS

Consider the fate that has befallen what should have been a perfectly fine family sitcom, Listen Up. Based on the life of sportswriter Tony Kornheiser, the show boasts one of the new season's better scripts and stronger supporting casts. It has the backing of its network, the built-in fan base of Kornheiser's ESPN hit Pardon the Interruption and the promotional pull of a well-known actor: Jason Alexander.

So why doesn't it work?

Jason Alexander.

About the show

Listen Up* 1/2 (out of four) CBS, tonight, 8:30 ET/PT

If TV should have learned anything from his success in Seinfeld and his failure in Bob Patterson and Bye, Bye Birdie, it's that Alexander is a performer with great comic gifts and not-so-great appeal. He can shine in roles that are closely tailored to his abilities and limitations. But Listen Up requires him to be convincing as a witty sports-show host, gifted writer, beloved husband and loving father — all while moving from annoying to endearing. He shows no signs of being able to carry off any of those tasks.

Ultimately, the problem has nothing to do with something as modern and specific as the so-called Seinfeld curse. It's simply the age-old showbiz mistake of trying to build a star vehicle around a second banana. There's a reason the show wasn't called I Love Ethel.

The main character in a sitcom doesn't have to be constantly huggable; Frasier dismantled that myth once and for all. But the star does ultimately have to be someone you laugh with, not at — someone you want to see succeed. And there's just something in Alexander's TV persona that makes you not only want to see him fail, but also to see him less.

And so the Kornheiser you get, renamed Tony Kleinman, is pretty much limited to the whining, screaming co-host you sometimes see on Pardon the Interruption, which is Kornheiser at his most buffoonish, smug and unsophisticated. What's missing is the wit, charm and brains that also can come through on his show and, more often, in his writing. That Tony could support a sitcom; this one can't.

Fate's cruelest joke here is that when Listen Up focuses on its supporting cast, the show works. Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Tony's partner and Will Rothhaar as his golf-prodigy son are both dryly amusing, and Wendy Makkena, while underused, is always reliable. Best of all is Daniella Monet, who is hilariously on target as the perpetually exasperated 14-year-old daughter who finds her father an unending source of embarrassment. She could be one of the season's real breakouts.

Unfortunately, that's not enough to carry the show. A sitcom needs a star. And that, Listen Up lacks.